To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield

My Father’s Prayer

This is a short post, and it isn’t something I wrote. It’s something my Dad wrote.

When I was cleaning up his apartment, getting it ready for him to move to another place, I found this in the drawer of his nightstand. Apparently, it was something that came to him while he was sleeping, and he wrote down what he remembered when he woke. Later, I snagged it, intending that it should be on those cards they hand out at funerals. But it, and the picture of him and my Mother that I had intended to put in the casket with him, went missing. Eaten by my house, only to appear again well after their purpose was past.

But it stayed with me, and now it has surfaced again. THIS time, I’ve saved it on my computer, and I’m posting it here, because the simple beauty and faith of it still stays in my mind. And that deserves to be passed on to others. So here it is.

I’ll look into it, thanks. Some of my friends are urging me to go back to school and apply for a Stafford loan. I’m reluctant, because I just completed a 2-year course and am in debt $20k which I can’t repay because the job I hoped to find with the training I just got hasn’t materialized. If I can’t pay that, how am I going to pay _another_ $20k?

I was holding off signing up for Social Security (I’m 62) because of the low amount it will be for my age, but now I’m going to do that because $800/mo is way better than $0.00/mo.

Also looking into HARP refinance on my house, hoping it goes through and does so before I lose the house…

Sorry, guys. I’m so bummed about all this that it’s hard not to go lower. I really do appreciate the suggestions, and I’ll be looking into all of them, I promise!

I hear you on that. Went through that with my mother, who had Alzheimer’s — a crime and a shame, that. And my father spent nearly three years lying alone in a bed in a nursing home. I could go up on weekends and see him, but that was all.
Just consider this: dementia takes the short term memory first. He doesn’t remember you because his mind is full of the immediate past. Sometimes, not even the beginning of a sentence remains by the time you reach the end of it. But the past — years, decades — that remains. That is clear. Music, and smells, and feelings, they remain sharp and accessible even if they were not before. So if you treated him with love before his dementia took his memory, then he knows you love him even if he can’t tie the two together now. And that knowledge will never leave him.